ALFRED — When the MostArts Festival gets underway in Alfred, July 13-19, there will be something for authors. This year the event will feature High Tea with Megan Staffel at 3 p.m. July 17 in the Nevins Theater at the Powell Campus Center.

Staffel is a longtime Alfred-area resident who now spends her winters in New York City and her summers in the quiet solitude of the rustic farmhouse on East Valley Road she shares with her husband, Graham Marks.

Megan Staffel

An award-winning author, Staffel has published six books of fiction, three novels and three collections of stories. She is retired from Warren Wilson College of Swannanoa, N.C., where she taught for many years in its Master of Fine Arts program. Along with publishing her recent work, “The Causative Factor,” for Regal House Publishing, she produces a well-read blog on her website called, “What I’m Reading.”

In a recent sit-down, the author explained that the inspiration for her newest novel, published in October , came to her on a hiking trip to Stony Brook State Park with her husband. There she contemplated what causes some to be recklessly adventuresome after noticing a low wall separating the path from a dangerous drop off. The idea stayed with her and came to fruition in “The Causative Factor” during the COVID epidemic.

“Because I’ve known risk takers in my life,” she said, “the thought stayed with me, and I wondered how that kind of behavior impacts the lives of others.”

The novel is a mystery based on the disappearance of just such a risk taker, Rubiat, who leaps off a drop off after a romantic interlude with Rachel. The two are art school students and after the accident, Rubiat’s body is never found. Rachel goes on with her studies and graduates. It is several years before she realizes she will never be able to live a full life until she closes the chapter on her encounter with Rubiat. There the mystery begins as Rachel plummets into her own investigation of what happened to her reckless lover.

What makes the story unique, Steffel explained, is that it takes place in the Western New York with the names of local schools, towns and other locations thinly veiled.

“I use Stony Brook Park because it is a National Park, but I’ve changed the names of other places. Local people will be able to recognize them, like the art school at Alfred, Alfred and Wellsville,” she said, as an author practicing the theory of writing about what they know.

“Mystery,” Staffel said, “is an important element of fiction,” and she feels that to one degree or another it figures in all of her novels.

The author of “The Mysteries,” Marisa Silver wrote of Staffel, “Megan writes gorgeously and movingly about the psychological legacies that inform our choices, as she does about the way in which art and a deep attachment to nature allow us to create ourselves, anew.”

Staffel said, “Nature, art and love are the three main themes of my work.”

The book took her about 1½ years to write and involved researching the psychological factors that cause certain types of people to take risks. It also included editing and re-editing her own work.

Staffel recalled a time a few years ago when she worked with the late CB Carol Burdick Hudson and a group of local writers called the Pond House Writers. One of the former members of the group, Susan Morehouse of Alfred University, will be on stage with her July 17 when Staffel reads from “The Causative Factor.” The two will then discuss the novel and take questions from the audience.

Called High Tea, the event will also feature refreshments.

Staffel’s book is available online and in the University Bookstore where the author will be signing copies after the event. She hopes to see many of her friends from the Alfred area at the discussion, especially those from the Pond House Writers group.

“The Causative Factor” is available on Kindle and Amazon.